Tag Archives: child ghost

The Unwanted Cuddle

Age: 19

EC: Pick an age 7  or 10

Interviewer: 7 

EC: So, when I was 7 years old my parents and I took a trip to the Whaley House in San Diego. It’s old, it’s like this old western town?

Interviewer: Were you going to the whaley house looking for ghosts, or just to see what it was?

EC: My family is into weird freaky stuff like that and it’s the most haunted house in America so my parents were into that. We also thought it was a museum more than a haunted house. 

For the most part it seemed sort of like a hoax. My parents thought it was more like a museum than a haunted house but it was like a cute little museum house with a courtroom, a store, and stuff like that so I just thought we were on a boring tour.

So I was looking for stuff to do in this old house, and the tour guide said that it was possible to feel a presence, but it still felt unrealistic and a hoax.  

We walked into their dining room which was a pretty small room and it was a pretty big group, 15-20 people, and I wasn’t paying attention or listening to the tour guide because it was a bunch of history I didn’t know since I was 7.

I am wearing this little pink, magenta little hoodie, and I was just looking around the room and staring at things. I stared at the dining room table and remembered that I thought it looked a lot like my grandma’s house, and I am standing near the table with my hands by my side. I wasn’t the only kid on the tour, and so I am just standing there and I feel this other little kid grab my hand. 

I didn’t think anything of it because there were other little kids and I was a really cuddly child. So I feel this little hand, and I remember its smaller than mine and I have small hands, and literally there was nothing there.

My mom said I shot my hands back into my pocket and I was really spooked about it because it felt like holding my mom’s hand, like it was real. 

And I really wasn’t the sort of kid to make a big deal of things so we finished the tour and my mom just kept asking what happened and eventually I told her that, like, I don’t want to sound crazy, but I really felt a hand holding mine.

My mom tells me that in that room, what the guy was talking about was that the youngest daughter who was part of the whaley family, I don’t remember her name, contracted something, maybe TB? And died when she was still really little.

The thing was that people would say especially little girls or moms would feel a girl grabbing onto them if they were taller or holding their hands. They say it’s because she was really close with her mom. 

But when I told her that and I told her that I wasn’t even listening, she agreed that it was really weird even though she knew it was a hoax. 

Everything I was wearing and stuff was more from her perspective,  but what I remember is looking to my right and expecting to see a person holding my hand, and even after I looked over I could still feel the hand holding mine but there was nothing there. 

Context: This story was told by the informant, who got most of the story and the context of the Whaley family from her mom, and her perspective on the informant’s physical reaction. The actual reaction to the ghosts was all from her perspective. The informant has always believed in ghosts, but the part that made it feel like a gimmick to her was the way that she thought ghosts should have appeared to her, versus how they did (alone like her room, vs. in a museum). She has since been back to the Whaley house twice, and nothing has happened to her since. This story was told to me alone.

Analysis: The informant believes that it was truly a ghost, 100%. She thinks it’s an interesting house, and that when she was little, she didn’t fully see it as a scary place, but as she got older, the energy felt heavier. At first I really believed that the story was a hoax, but as my friend explained more about the story and the way that it genuinely moved her and changed the way she thought about ghosts, and even that visceral story that has stuck with her for so many years, I feel like it has to be a true story, or at least have some sort of truth behind it. 

Moisesito

Age: 20

Folk Narrative: Memorate 

Text: Moisesito 

“Growing up, I would visit my grandma’s friend’s house. One day, she handed me a toy teaset, and when I was trying to grab it (she had already let go of it), I felt a force pulling the teaset away from me. I specifically remember pulling it; something invisible was pulling it on the other side. I couldn’t pull it toward me until my grandmother’s friend yelled “aplácate ya” or “calm down now,” I could finally pull it. Then, the lights started flashing, and she again asked it to stop. I looked at her, confused, and she told me not to worry because that was Moisesito. Apparently, when he was two or three years old, he died in a car crash, and now he just stays at her house because she was his caregiver. He doesn’t harm anybody but does like playing tricks”. 

Context: My informant had this experience when she was in elementary school, visiting her grandmother’s friend’s house. She mentioned that the woman had asked her if she remembered Moisesito (implying that she had met him before), but she did not. When I asked her if she knew it was him, she said she had no idea and thought she wasn’t strong enough to pull it. She didn’t realize it was Moisesito until her grandmother’s friend told her not to be scared because it was just him playing tricks. She also mentioned that after this happened, her grandmother told her not to fear if she hears noises or other strange things happening because it’s just him. When asked if the existence of Moisesito was born from the grief of his loss, she told me she wasn’t sure but that her grandmother’s friend dreams of him often and sees him walking around. She believes that people who died in a tragic accident stay here until somebody helps them complete their pending last wishes. Because of this, they believe Moisesito is still active in this world. 

Analysis: Looking at this memorate, we can see how what may have been a simple matter of lack of strength was quickly addressed and named Moisesito. In this case, the story of Moisesito—a ghost child who died tragically and now resides in a caregiver’s home—emerges not from a community-wide legend, but from a deeply personal and intimate encounter that was later explained through familial belief. At the heart of this memorate is a moment of confusion and physical resistance: the informant attempts to take a toy tea set, only to feel an invisible force pulling it away. She initially interprets the situation as a mundane struggle—perhaps a lack of strength or clumsiness—but the caregiver immediately intervenes with a supernatural explanation, identifying the force as Moisesito. This recontextualization of the event is critical to understanding the memorate as a genre: an ordinary experience is interpreted through supernatural terms based on existing belief systems. The story is tied to a specific house, the caregiver, and a specific spiritual entity—Moisesito. The informant does not initially ascribe any supernatural quality to her experience; the narrative only takes on a spiritual dimension after being filtered through the caregiver’s worldview. This moment illustrates how memorates are shaped: the individual experiences something unusual, and cultural or familial frameworks help interpret it. The explanation that Moisesito died tragically and lingers in the house until his final wishes are fulfilled aligns with common folk beliefs across cultures that spirits of the dead, particularly those who died young or suddenly, remain in the liminal space between worlds. The familial responses further reinforce this framework. After the event, the informant’s grandmother validates the experience by telling her not to fear future encounters, solidifying Moisesito’s presence as a known and accepted figure within the household. 

The Ballerina/La Bailarina

Informant Information – SI

  • Nationality: American
  • Age: 20
  • Occupation: Student
  • Residence: Los Angeles, California
  • Date of Performance/Collection: April 20, 2022
  • Primary Language: English

The informant learned about this legend while attending an elementary school in Mexico. They first played the game in fourth or fifth grade, but the legend was well-known by students of all ages at their school. They shared this information with me in an in-person interview. 

Informant: 

So in my elementary school when I was younger, we had this story and game called The Ballerina that was kind of a myth about how our school was built I guess you could say. 

According to the story, before the school was built, there used to be train tracks, like for a passenger train that would go through the city where the school was eventually built. And this is actually not very believable now that I think of it, but according to the story, there was this little girl that was a dancer, a ballerina. And one day, she was dancing on her way home from her dance lessons near the train tracks. Apparently, she was either dancing on the tracks or just near them and fell onto the tracks, but basically, she was on the train tracks and got run over by the train. It was very sad.

So then, after her death, they closed the train tracks and my elementary school was built but the land was always haunted by the ballerina, who would apparently still dance in the halls at night. 

At school, we had a game based on this story that we called The Ballerina, well actually we said La Bailarina because we spoke Spanish. You would go in the bathroom alone and turn off the lights. Then you would look in the mirror and say “Ballerina” three times to summon her. You were supposed to hear music and see her face in the mirror with yours. 

Analysis:

In this piece of folklore, the Ballerina is very similar to Bloody Mary. However, rather than a witch, the Ballerina is the ghost of a child that was killed by an accident. This legend also lacks a religious association that I have seen in some versions of Bloody Mary. 

The informant noted that the premise of this legend is quite strange due to the rarity of passenger trains in Mexico. It seems that this legend could either have emerged as an explanation for the lack of trains or as the result of the disinclination for trains that makes them so uncommon. 

Ghost Story: Cursed Tomb

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Shenyang, Liaoning, China
Performance Date: April 20, 2021
Primary Language: English

Main Piece: 

“If there’s a woman and she’s pregnant with a kid, if she dies and gets buried, there’s a possibility that the kid is still alive. The tomb will be cursed and the kid will still live and grow and live in the tomb. And the village where the tomb is won’t receive any rain for many years.”

Background:

My informant said that this was a folk belief that he had heard, like a ghost story, growing up in China. The informant had little personal relationship to this story, but had heard it repeatedly from a variety of ages. It seemed more region-specific than specific to another group. He offered interpretations of the story both as a regular “spooky story” to tell and as a folk belief in farmers to help avoid or explain away destitute lands. 

Thoughts:

Ghosts are often reflections of what a culture considers unfinished business or a scar from the past. It’s likely that in this case, we’re seeing part of a natural grieving process for the loss of both the pregnant woman and the unborn child. Because there is a feeling of doubled loss, a supernatural consequence may feel necessary. Additionally, there’s a strong sense in this story that the natural order is being disrupted. Pregnancy is supposed to lead to new life, but it is disrupted here and ends in death. As a consequence, the natural order of the weather is equally negatively disrupted. The curse on the tomb is a curse of no rain and thus no crops.